


A Little Just in Time

by Callisto



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, Episode Related, Episode: s02e02 Everybody Loves a Clown, Gen, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-08
Updated: 2011-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 18:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/179844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callisto/pseuds/Callisto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Dean’s will--Dean would kill him if he called it faith--is the stuff of legend for Sam. It can move mountains, rebuild Impalas, cremate loved ones, and kill a Hindu Rakshasa for dessert. And it can do it all in a single week if it has to.</i></p><p>A coda to S2.02 'Everybody Loves a Clown'. When Dean’s idea of dealing was to take a tire iron to his baby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Just in Time

**Author's Note:**

> Love and thanks to Ancasta for the beta.

Sam: “You were right.”  
Dean: “About what?”  
Sam: “About me and Dad. I’m sorry that the last time I was with him, I tried to pick a fight. I’m sorry that I spent most of my life angry at him. I mean, for all I know, he died thinkin’ that I hate him. So, you’re right. What I’m doin’ right now - it is too little. It’s too late. [pause] I miss him, man. And I feel guilty as hell. [He is on the verge of tears.] And I’m not all right. Not at all. [pause] But neither are you. That much I know. I’ll let you get back to work.”  
-2.02, Everybody Loves a Clown -

 

When the first crunch of metal on glass sounds out, Sam is halfway across Bobby’s living-room. He freezes, swaying a little as he halts himself mid-step. He knows what he’s hearing outside, so there’s no need to move to a window to see it. He listens instead, with his head cocked and his eyes closed, almost holding his breath as the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of a tire iron on dull metal obliterates the day around him. Finally it stops, and the faint sound of a radio playing fades back in. He opens his eyes and carries on into Bobby’s kitchen. He puts the glass he’s been carrying into the sink and risks a look out of the small window above it, but Dean is nowhere in sight. Sam exhales slowly and wonders how much damage has been done, how much longer it is now going to take to put both the Impala and his brother back together again.

Dean turns up about two hours later, covered in fatigue and axle grease and not really looking anywhere for too long. Sam has a sandwich, a cold beer and some silence waiting for him. He sees the scrapes and swellings under the grease across Dean’s knuckles, sees him wince as he wraps a careful hand around his food, but he leaves him to it and says nothing. He washes the same glass twice before he thinks about physically leaving the room, giving Dean that extra peace of mind Sam’s presence sometimes seems to take away from his brother these days. But other than the kitchen-living-room-library, there isn’t a whole helluva lot to Bobby’s place. And he sure as shit isn’t going anywhere near Bobby’s bedroom.

When he watches Dean nearly drop the beer bottle for a second time, he realizes that this is one piece of guilt he can actually do something about. He pushed for this; the least he can do is minister to the consequences.

He rummages in the cupboard under the sink and takes out what he needs. Then he pulls out the chair opposite Dean and lays his ammunition on the table: tweezers, cotton, a few strips of gauze, a good needle, and Bobby’s famous homebrew gallon bottle of kill-anything-stone-fucking-dead antiseptic.

“Overkill, Samantha. I’m fine.”

“Yeah, sure you are. You want to actually hold that bottle there, Dean, or maybe I could see if Bobby’s got any straws?”

The look he gets could burn asbestos, but Sam has ignored a thousand of those in his lifetime and this one is no different. Dean looks like he’d bolt if only he had the energy and the coordination, and Sam suspects he’s a curse and a violent chair-scrape away from being blown off here.

But there’s a tremor running through his brother that will keep Sam where he is. He can see it, from jaw to elbow, all the way through each shoulder and down his fingers. Sam figures it’s been there a while now. Probably eight days and counting. Dean’s will--Dean would kill him if he called it faith--is the stuff of legend for Sam. It can move mountains, rebuild Impalas, cremate loved ones, and kill a Hindu Rakshasa for dessert. And it can do it all in a single week if it has to. When he was growing up, Sam took Dean’s implacable game-face for granted, thought it was simply part and parcel of having the coolest brother in the world. But now he’s learning to see the strain. And now that he’s seen it, he cannot bear to do nothing. So he puts a hand over Dean’s left wrist.

“Dean.” He pitches his voice just right. Another thing he’s done a thousand times.

And just like that the tremor becomes a fully fledged muscle jump across Dean’s jaw, and the pulse under his fingers jitters. But the shoulders come down an inch or two, and Dean’s hand opens out slowly on the table. When he speaks, he doesn’t look up.

“Go ahead, but for the love of God no talking, Sam. I mean it. Not one word.”

Sam can live with that; he was half expecting it anyway. So they sit across from one another at that small table and look at Dean’s knuckles and palms with way too much concentration. Sam cleans the dirt out of the scrapes with careful swipes, disinfecting as he goes. It’s late afternoon and shadows lengthen across the room as Sam bends over those calloused hands and searches out the new marks. The only sound in his ears is Dean breathing, steady and long, and then hitching slightly when Sam goes for a nasty sliver of glass embedded in his brother’s right thumb. He’s almost done, just a couple more-

“He wanted you to be there.”

Sam knows better than to react, so he doesn’t. He just tilts Dean’s hand toward the light a little more and continues in with the needle.

“I mean, not at first. At first I thought he was going to punch walls he was so mad. You’d never... we’d never been apart like that. And it just... it wasn’t easy. You out there alone, halfway across the country, and nobody at your back. A lot of it was worry, Sammy. You have to know that. Hell, he goddamn well _told_ you he wanted you to go to school.”

 _And that he wanted you to have a home_. That’s the part he remembers now, from that godawful cabin, as he narrows his focus to a needlepoint under the surface of his brother’s skin and feels his eyes burn. He knows what it costs Dean to even whisper the words ‘school’ ‘want’ and ‘go’ in the same breath, to say anything that may reset Sam’s path back the way it came. He swallows and the truth of it hits him again. He and a broken Impala are all the home there is now for Dean.

“Now you should definitely say something.”

Sam holds his silence a beat or two longer, until... “There.” Sam pulls the last sliver of glass out, holds it aloft in the tweezers so that they can both see, and for some reason they are finally looking at each other and smiling.

Dean looks him straight in the eye, and Sam sees nothing but big-brother patience with him again.

“Did you hate him, Sam?”

“Of course not.”

“Well then, why would he think that?”

“I just...”

“Butting heads, Sammy. The man said it himself.”

And Sam has to give in a little at that. So he nods and gives Dean a tug on his sleeve to show that his point has been made.

Only Dean opens his mouth, closes it, and rubs his now flexible hand down over his face. Sam leans forward, puzzled, because whatever extra words are trying to climb out seem to need help.

“Dean?”

Dean looks away for a second, then clears his throat and makes a swatting motion. “Nothing, Sam. It’s okay. Really.”

The tremor is back but this time it really could be exhaustion, so Sam is prepared to let it slide.

Then Dean makes another kind of gesture - hand out, palm up and facing him, one that Sam knows only too well. It’s the bat signal for the end of any and all emo...

“So now you can hand me that beer, Florence, and tell me exactly what the hell a Ouija board is doing in your duffel.”

...or maybe not.

*******


End file.
